IN NEGOTIATING the potholes and pitfalls of a racing life that makes Seabiscuit seem dull, Jonjo O’Neill has encountered the full range of public reactions. At first, it was simple affection and admiration for a dauntless, endearing battler but now, as he trains 100 horses in an equine palace, he has cultivated a different and intriguing image.
O’Neill has become an enigma. Quite deliberately, he has removed himself from the daily ping-pong of racing banter. The twinkling eyes and quick one-liners are still evident but only as a defence mechanism. Jonjo protects his innermost thoughts and plans as once he protected his favoured run up the rail.
He is aware, being nobody’s fool, that it irritates the racing media and leads to suspicion of sickness, subterfuge or worse. He is prepared to live with that. “I’m not trying to hide anything. I know people think I am and it makes me laugh. I just want to do my own thing, what’s best for the horses,” he explained.
“I need to weigh things up and if I’m being swayed by headlines I’m not doing the job right. I know that if a horse runs well I’ll get the credit and if it gets beat I’ll get all the slagging — I’ve no problem with that but I don’t like feeling roped into something I don’t want to do. That puts me off the talking.”
There is no sense here of a neurotic soul. The very idea is risible. An hour in O’Neill’s company is enough to know that he remains besotted by training. And why not, with Jackdaws Castle now boasting five all-weather gallops, a vast indoor school, a pool and three solariums, not to mention imposing electronic gates and sweeping driveways? “It’s magical, really,” he said, as we sat on leather chairs in the owners’ suite — a kind of upmarket airline lounge. “You have aims in life and you’re not always going to get there. But we’ve now got everything we need to help. The building phase is finished and it’s like heaven.”
Five years ago, in what must seem a different life, we had shared a jeep in the lashing rain of the Cumbrian fells. O’Neill had rebuilt his training career from the ravages of cancer and divorce and created a thriving stable from a derelict farm. “It’s a great life,” he had said, “when you learn not to take it too seriously.”
I reminded him of that maxim, asked if it could possibly be sustained, now that he has J. P. McManus as his landlord and trains some of the highest-profile horses in the land. “I don’t find the expectation a big problem. It’s always been my philosophy through life to do an honest job every day — if I make a cock-up, sorry, it’s not been done on purpose.
“I learnt an awful lot in Cumbria. Sometimes, I look back and shudder at the things we did, like galloping horses on the fells among all those stones. The place we trained in was primitive, compared to here, but we made it work and I appreciate this all the more because of it.
“Of course, life is different now. Every day, something happens and you do take it all too seriously. We all get wound up — the important thing is to get back down to that level of reality, which can be hard to do. If I take the worries home at night, it’s the pressure of what I’m going to run, and where and how. Sometimes, it can drive you crackers.”
Especially now, with the finishing touches required to the battalion that will leave for nearby Cheltenham next month. The mere mention of it lights up O’Neill’s impish face. “Every day, every night, I’m counting the hours. If you don’t get a buzz out of Cheltenham, if it just gets to be part of your job, then you want to get out of the game. I’d give up if these feelings ever went.”
Last year, O’Neill saddled three Festival winners — one each day. Virtually every trainer in Britain envied him. “I shouldn’t say it, really, but I was a bit disappointed because the fancied ones all got beat.” In many cases, they were “wrong” afterwards, victims of the flu-like bug that descended on Jackdaws again recently. Keen Leader, who returns at Newbury today, was one of the sufferers and the two-month hiatus since his swaggering win at Haydock gives O’Neill little margin for error before he meets Best Mate in the Tote Gold Cup.
“He’s become more of a talking horse than an action horse and it’s time he started living up to the talking. He’s good, and I’m not embarrassed to say that, but he needs to put everything together now. It’s in the back of my mind that his best form has been on a level track and that he’s fallen twice at Cheltenham but I’m prepared to forgive him that.”
Liam Cooper regains the ride today, the latest sign of O’Neill’s faith in the homebred jockey who joined him in Cumbria as a stable lad and has adopted no airs or pretensions. “He still mucks in, mucks out and is a great example to any young lad with big ideas. I find him very honest and he’s a lovely horseman. He’s a sensitive rider — sometimes, maybe, over-sensitive but how can you argue with that? You’ve always got a horse afterwards and, nine times out of ten, he’s right, anyway.”
Given such faith, the persistent rumour that O’Neill is about to recruit Tony McCoy is baffling. O’Neill chuckles and shrugs. “It never goes away but I don’t know where it comes from, because nobody has ever done anything about it. If you’ve got good enough horses, you don’t have a problem finding jockeys. And I can always get back on myself, if we’re stuck . . . ”
Cooper embodies the spirit in O’Neill’s staff. Most, like his trusted head lad, Alan Roche, accompanied him down the M6 from Cumbria, which he considers crucial to the bedding-in process in the Cotswolds. “They are all grafters. There are no images round here.”
O’Neill appears to have a bulging hand in the Champion Hurdle but only Intersky Falcon — another Cooper ride — is certain to run in the race. “He’s the obvious one and the quicker the ground, the better. He’ll run at Wincanton next Saturday.”
Rhinestone Cowboy, who has the Coral Cup as an alternative, may need farther than Cheltenham’s two miles. “It all happened a bit quickly for him last year,” he said. Specular, by contrast, seems to want the faster ground and tighter tracks of his native Australia. “I was very disappointed in his first run,” O’Neill admits.
One Festival race animates O’Neill like no other. It is the Stayers’ Hurdle, in which Iris’s Gift was a gallant runner-up last year behind the McManus-owned Baracouda. He has not run since Aintree in April, so this is a big day, O’Neill having chosen Haydock for a belated comeback. “If anything can beat J. P.’s horse, it will be Iris’s Gift. It was a fantastic race last year and I’m looking forward to it more than anything.”
For now, it is the big races that are O’Neill’s focus. One day, he hopes it will be the trainers’ title, which this year involves a riveting duel between Martin Pipe and Paul Nicholls. “Everyone wants to be champion, so of course it is important, but I was in that position when I rode and I know it happens when it happens. You can’t force it.
“With Martin and Paul, we have got two fantastic trainers having a cut and that’s great for racing. I’d love to be up there among them but we haven’t got enough mature horses to do it — not yet, anyway. I’m not impatient. All the work we’ve done here has made the horses safe and happy. If you’ve got a happy yard, hopefully you’ve got a successful one.”
www.timesonline.co.uk/article
O’Neill has become an enigma. Quite deliberately, he has removed himself from the daily ping-pong of racing banter. The twinkling eyes and quick one-liners are still evident but only as a defence mechanism. Jonjo protects his innermost thoughts and plans as once he protected his favoured run up the rail.
He is aware, being nobody’s fool, that it irritates the racing media and leads to suspicion of sickness, subterfuge or worse. He is prepared to live with that. “I’m not trying to hide anything. I know people think I am and it makes me laugh. I just want to do my own thing, what’s best for the horses,” he explained.
“I need to weigh things up and if I’m being swayed by headlines I’m not doing the job right. I know that if a horse runs well I’ll get the credit and if it gets beat I’ll get all the slagging — I’ve no problem with that but I don’t like feeling roped into something I don’t want to do. That puts me off the talking.”
There is no sense here of a neurotic soul. The very idea is risible. An hour in O’Neill’s company is enough to know that he remains besotted by training. And why not, with Jackdaws Castle now boasting five all-weather gallops, a vast indoor school, a pool and three solariums, not to mention imposing electronic gates and sweeping driveways? “It’s magical, really,” he said, as we sat on leather chairs in the owners’ suite — a kind of upmarket airline lounge. “You have aims in life and you’re not always going to get there. But we’ve now got everything we need to help. The building phase is finished and it’s like heaven.”
Five years ago, in what must seem a different life, we had shared a jeep in the lashing rain of the Cumbrian fells. O’Neill had rebuilt his training career from the ravages of cancer and divorce and created a thriving stable from a derelict farm. “It’s a great life,” he had said, “when you learn not to take it too seriously.”
I reminded him of that maxim, asked if it could possibly be sustained, now that he has J. P. McManus as his landlord and trains some of the highest-profile horses in the land. “I don’t find the expectation a big problem. It’s always been my philosophy through life to do an honest job every day — if I make a cock-up, sorry, it’s not been done on purpose.
“I learnt an awful lot in Cumbria. Sometimes, I look back and shudder at the things we did, like galloping horses on the fells among all those stones. The place we trained in was primitive, compared to here, but we made it work and I appreciate this all the more because of it.
“Of course, life is different now. Every day, something happens and you do take it all too seriously. We all get wound up — the important thing is to get back down to that level of reality, which can be hard to do. If I take the worries home at night, it’s the pressure of what I’m going to run, and where and how. Sometimes, it can drive you crackers.”
Especially now, with the finishing touches required to the battalion that will leave for nearby Cheltenham next month. The mere mention of it lights up O’Neill’s impish face. “Every day, every night, I’m counting the hours. If you don’t get a buzz out of Cheltenham, if it just gets to be part of your job, then you want to get out of the game. I’d give up if these feelings ever went.”
Last year, O’Neill saddled three Festival winners — one each day. Virtually every trainer in Britain envied him. “I shouldn’t say it, really, but I was a bit disappointed because the fancied ones all got beat.” In many cases, they were “wrong” afterwards, victims of the flu-like bug that descended on Jackdaws again recently. Keen Leader, who returns at Newbury today, was one of the sufferers and the two-month hiatus since his swaggering win at Haydock gives O’Neill little margin for error before he meets Best Mate in the Tote Gold Cup.
“He’s become more of a talking horse than an action horse and it’s time he started living up to the talking. He’s good, and I’m not embarrassed to say that, but he needs to put everything together now. It’s in the back of my mind that his best form has been on a level track and that he’s fallen twice at Cheltenham but I’m prepared to forgive him that.”
Liam Cooper regains the ride today, the latest sign of O’Neill’s faith in the homebred jockey who joined him in Cumbria as a stable lad and has adopted no airs or pretensions. “He still mucks in, mucks out and is a great example to any young lad with big ideas. I find him very honest and he’s a lovely horseman. He’s a sensitive rider — sometimes, maybe, over-sensitive but how can you argue with that? You’ve always got a horse afterwards and, nine times out of ten, he’s right, anyway.”
Given such faith, the persistent rumour that O’Neill is about to recruit Tony McCoy is baffling. O’Neill chuckles and shrugs. “It never goes away but I don’t know where it comes from, because nobody has ever done anything about it. If you’ve got good enough horses, you don’t have a problem finding jockeys. And I can always get back on myself, if we’re stuck . . . ”
Cooper embodies the spirit in O’Neill’s staff. Most, like his trusted head lad, Alan Roche, accompanied him down the M6 from Cumbria, which he considers crucial to the bedding-in process in the Cotswolds. “They are all grafters. There are no images round here.”
O’Neill appears to have a bulging hand in the Champion Hurdle but only Intersky Falcon — another Cooper ride — is certain to run in the race. “He’s the obvious one and the quicker the ground, the better. He’ll run at Wincanton next Saturday.”
Rhinestone Cowboy, who has the Coral Cup as an alternative, may need farther than Cheltenham’s two miles. “It all happened a bit quickly for him last year,” he said. Specular, by contrast, seems to want the faster ground and tighter tracks of his native Australia. “I was very disappointed in his first run,” O’Neill admits.
One Festival race animates O’Neill like no other. It is the Stayers’ Hurdle, in which Iris’s Gift was a gallant runner-up last year behind the McManus-owned Baracouda. He has not run since Aintree in April, so this is a big day, O’Neill having chosen Haydock for a belated comeback. “If anything can beat J. P.’s horse, it will be Iris’s Gift. It was a fantastic race last year and I’m looking forward to it more than anything.”
For now, it is the big races that are O’Neill’s focus. One day, he hopes it will be the trainers’ title, which this year involves a riveting duel between Martin Pipe and Paul Nicholls. “Everyone wants to be champion, so of course it is important, but I was in that position when I rode and I know it happens when it happens. You can’t force it.
“With Martin and Paul, we have got two fantastic trainers having a cut and that’s great for racing. I’d love to be up there among them but we haven’t got enough mature horses to do it — not yet, anyway. I’m not impatient. All the work we’ve done here has made the horses safe and happy. If you’ve got a happy yard, hopefully you’ve got a successful one.”
www.timesonline.co.uk/article
